Return to article newsletter menu

NEWSLETTER 12/05/2008

What does it mean to be in two minds?

A stroke of insight!

Most of us would have had the experience of being in two minds about something. It is like one part wants to do one thing while the other part wants to do something else. Most of the time we are able to resolve the conflict and get on with our lives. But at other times it can feel as if there is another part that runs our behaviour without our conscious control. For example some people make a decision to stop smoking, avoid chocolate, cut down on alcohol, stop using a drug, break up a relationship etc. - and yet they are unable to do so. If it is their brain and their mind then why can't they make the behavioural change?

The medical model says that we are addicted to chemicals. It says that brain chemistry, neurotransmitters, receptor cells etc. are at the root of the problem. Yet the addiction model does not explain how some people are able to stop an addictive pattern without medical intervention while others struggle desperately for decades. If the addiction model was correct then once someone had successfully withdrawn from an addictive substance then they should be free from the habit for the rest of their life. And yet it is not uncommon for stress to kick off the habit once again.

Let's look at inner conflict from an NLP perspective. We start by having the client acknowledge that there is a part of them that wants to stop a behaviour and a part that wants them to continue. Then we gather information about each side. It generally looks something like the following:

The adult part may want to change a behavior but often finds itself powerless against the child part. In a way it is humorous. In my mind I see an image of a strong adult man in conflict with a pretty 2 year old girl. The 2 year old can beat the man any day.

The solution is for the adult part to relinquish 'control' to the child part and then have both parts work together as a team, sharing their positive attributes. Once the child part gets to play a bigger part in the clients life it grows up and the negative behaviours disappear.

Now let's take a quick look at left brain, right brain attributes.

When you compare the parts list with the brain functioning list you'll see that the adult part has similarities to a left brain function and the childlike part has similarities to a right brain function.

It gets even more interesting when you watch the short film of Jill Taylor, a neuroscientist who suffered a blood clot to her left hemisphere. Her description of the experience, eight years after the event, is fascinating. As she lost her left brain functioning she totally lost her cognitive abilities and entered into a right brain experience of the world. When you listen to her she seems to be quite clearly describing an experience of enlightenment - albeit caused by a physical trauma to her brain.

The film is about ten minutes long and well worth watching.

So how to have more right brain experiences?

Meditate! It is as simple as that.

You can easily get a sense of moving from the left hemisphere to the right with peripheral sensing meditation. Start by gazing at a spot somewhere in front of you. Don't concentrate, just gently gaze at a spot somewhere in front of you then begin to explore the peripheral vision.

In a matter of moments you will see how objects lose their names and just become objects; colours lose their names and just become colour; and as you close your eyes and drop into a meditative space now, you will find yourself expanding and losing a sense of time so that by the time you open your eyes again you might wonder how long you have been sitting here enjoying the space.

Kind regards

Abby Eagle

P.S. Take the brain hemisphere dominance 'test'. It's a bit of fun. See if you can get the whirling woman to shift direction.

Return to article newsletter menu